Justice or Equity vs Equality

One of the most difficult tasks anyone will ever attempt to achieve is to relate with two individuals equally . Parents with more than one child have been faced with this challenge since time immemorial. It is virtually impossible for a parent to love all of his or her children equally. It is only natural for there to be just a little bit more affection towards a particular child for reasons such as the child's character, the position among the children (the last borns are usually the beneficiaries of this) or resemblance to a particular parent or spouse. Unbalanced expression of such extra affection in the midst of the other children often times leads to the recipient of such affection being antagonised by the other children. Similarly we interact with different people with different backgrounds or status in our everyday lives, attempting to treat or relate with them equally will also be counter productive in the sense that the needs of person A may be will likely be different from the needs of person B. Thus meeting the needs of person A in the same manner with that of person B will also be unfair except the conditions of person A are exactly the same or very similar to that of person B. Let me go back to a typical family situation, it will be unfair for a parent with children in College to provide exactly the same amount of funding for children studying different courses aside the basic needs of feeding and accommodation. The reason is that each course has its peculiar requirements with it's attendant financial implications. The funding needed by someone in the sciences cannot be the same as that for one in the Arts , hence it will be unjust for both individuals to receive the same amount of funding. The point of this write up is that what we should strive for is being just to each individual based on his or her perculiarities. This is not an easy task but I believe that if we adopt this approach it will be easier for us to be just and fair in our dealings with others whether they are our children, relatives, colleagues at the office or the random stranger on the street.